Software Engineer, Rust

Who we are  

Helsing develops artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities to protect and defend democracies. We build Altra, an AI-powered drone software platform, and HX-2, our autonomous drone. We are growing our US operations, cultivating an ambitious and committed team of mission-driven professionals to apply their skills to solve challenging problems.  

The role  

You will work on Altra, Helsing's drone software platform, primarily written in Rust. You will design and build systems-level software that powers autonomous capabilities in challenging operational environments. You don't need to be a drone expert — but you should be a strong systems programmer who thrives in low-latency, high-reliability environments and is excited to apply those skills to a mission-critical product.  

The day-to-day  

Designing, building, and maintaining Rust services across the Altra platform  

Collaborating with ML engineers to integrate AI/ML pipelines into the broader system  

Working across the stack, from networking and protocol implementation to application-level services  

Contributing to increasingly advanced autonomy features  

Developing and testing software using simulation environments  

Writing software that must perform reliably on resource-constrained platforms under real-world constraints  

You should apply if you  

Have 5+ years of experience in systems-level software engineering  

Have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field  

Are proficient in Rust, or have strong experience in C++ or another systems-level compiled language with a willingness to work in Rust daily  

Have experience building distributed systems, particularly in unreliable or constrained network environments  

Have worked with real-time or low-latency systems where performance and reliability are critical  

Have experience with at least one or two areas relevant to our stack: video streaming, pub/sub messaging, sensor data processing, embedded systems, protocol design, or robotics  

Have designed or built systems that interface with AI/ML pipelines — streaming data to models, handling inference outputs, managing pipeline orchestration  

Are familiar with Python, particularly for interfacing with ML/AI components  

U.S. citizenship required  

Nice to have  

Direct experience with Rust in production systems  

Background in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or drone systems  

Experience with sensor fusion or multi-sensor data processing  

Familiarity with swarming, multi-agent systems, or decentralized coordination algorithms  

Experience with constrained or embedded platforms  

Familiarity with Nix or NixOS for reproducible builds and development environments  

Experience with SITL/HITL (Software/Hardware-In-The-Loop) simulation and testing frameworks for autonomous systems  

Experience with RF communications, telemetry, or datalink systems  

Background in defense or national security  

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields  

Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns

The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world

Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defense industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward

In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements a …